Last week's TV

See the shiny return of my favorite Flack icon? After a whole month of having a Plus account, I decided it was finally time to start taking advantage of this fact by adding more icons. Also, if anyone could figure out why I am incapable of finishing my weekly TV reviews before Sunday, even when there are only four of them and they all aired by Wednesday, I'm open for ideas.

Medium, 4x3, “To Have and to Hold”

Allison and Joe fill me with a delight I didn't even know existed.I find it impossible to believe that at the beginning of the month I was actually close to indifferent about this show.Where was my brain, in the shop for repairs?

This review goes down in chronological bullet-point form, because it was the only way I could concentrate instead of just watching the cute bits over and over and over.

-I found myself intensely amused by Joe's expression, mouth frozen in an O, after hearing about her dream of a wife stabbing her husband through the hand with a corkscrew.(Note to self: do not piss Allison off while serving wine.)

-I think the theme song is growing on me.I began with a marked dislike for its oddity, which only increased after Mom said it was Hitchcock-like (oh, how I loathe the mass appeal of Alfred Hitchcock), but now after a couple weeks of active watching - not to mention the overdose I took in on Thursday when I found the series available online - its darkly foreboding music and haunting vocals bring me shivers of delight.

-I continue to obsess over Ariel's gorgeous hair.Sporting a thin headband paired with pigtails, and later French-braided pigtails and then crossed-over braids, I like to imagine the stylists are the only people who love her hair more than I do.

-While I'm on the subject of hair, although it's a bit of a digression, I feel like mentioning that when I first started watching it last season, I was disappointed in Allison's short bob.Now while watching old episodes, I reluctantly (and ONLY because she's over 35) admit that she looks much better with it short.Even in season 1, the long hair dragged her face down.Right now, she looks really, really good.

Oh, married people!They make me so happy.Wives and their specialized glares and all, with husbands vaguely amused by them.

-"Bingo.You just met every one of my minimum requirements for friendship."

"Oh, cool."

Her delivery of that response too perfect.Funnily enough, I was JUST thinking that I was just about ready to handle a more traditional bedroom scene on this show.Knowing, of course, that it would strictly conform to Medium-fuzzy standards and rely entirely upon the power of suggestion by cutting away in the middle of kissing (itself already half obscured) and opening back only briefly on the most minimal showing of skin possible, bare shoulders, I find that I am very pleased by the way they occasionally slip this in.Especially when they placate me with extra snuggling, just in case.

-Let's see, how do I feel about this week's storyline?For starters, the missing woman's parents were Carter's dad and Meredith's mom.Unfortunately, while I like the actor, I despise the actress.The woman's portrayal of Ellis Grey has permanently ruined her for me; I can't even look at her or hear her voice without twitching and/or wanting to slap her.

Aside from that, very cool and very intriguing.My years of crime dramas have done no more for my ability to figure out mysteries than my years of band helped me hear pitch; I had absolutely no idea where they were going with the Paris thing, aside from thinking that her chirpy everything-is-fine message didn't sound quite right, until he took off his glove to reveal the big bloody bandage on his hand.This may have been because I was too busy being enchanted by the museum dioramas in the background, though.I have a strange obsession with taxidermy, particularly where it's for educational purposes and not "look how awesome I am for killing this fearsome deer."

-Passive-aggressive Joe!I'm more fond of him than I probably should be."Just remember - if we ever hope to send our three girls to college, you damn well better find her."

-I did get really, really sick of the music in the dreams, though.I had to hear it entirely too many times, since I kept jumping back to watch the cuddly scenes, and of course cuddling scenes always end with an abrupt switch to dreams.It was just such an intrusion on my quiet squeeing.

-Far and away the best part of the episode, his late night job search after the falling-out with the missing girl's parents, and her apologies going ignored.Just I sat up with worry to chant "Don't go to bed mad, don't go to bed mad," he abruptly turned and held out his hand, prompting me to bounce myself right off the bed with collected squee (well, not really, but close).I think I would need a repeating clip of his voice on "C'mere" to play for about three hours straight before I ever got tired of it.Included in this package of squee (for there are never mere moments) are a cheek kiss, arms around shoulders/half-sitting in lap, and my desire to have an icon or at least a desktop picture of how nicely they fit together in this frame.Are like two interlocking pieces of a puzzle.

-I also continued to miss neither Devalos's absence nor Scanlon's minimal screentime.I did, however, like the latter's very tricky "Okay, I can't get a search warrant, but if someone were to HAPPEN to call in a fire alarm or something in that area while I'm patrolling it, HINT HINT OBVIOUS HINT."

-I did not like the actual sound of a fire alarm incessantly blasting over the next scene, though.Dammit, Allison, he also named "chemical spill" and "bomb threat" in your list of options.Why couldn't you have chosen something less ear-bleedingly obnoxious?Maybe also something that wouldn't have scared the poor missing woman half to death thinking she was going to be burned alive?

-I will forgive all that for THE ENDING!Oh my God, the whole family was so wonderful in that scene.It is truth universal that while all kids want their parents to be happy and be together, no kid ever wants their parents to display any sign of physical affection.Hence the shrieks of "gross!" and "stop it!" and the covering of Marie's innocent eyes as Joe pulls Allison onto his lap and starts mercilessly tickling her.Meanwhile, no matter how many times I watch it, I cannot help giggling out loud.WHY ARE THEY SO CUTE??I am beginning to think that for all the talk of tooth-rotting sugar in Pushing Daisies, Medium just might kick its tail in that department.

-Speaking of cute and kids, is Marie really only 4 years old?I think I may have to re-evaluate my scale on when kids become acceptable members of society.Normally I say it's when they start school full-time, but I am becoming increasingly enchanted by little 3 and 4 year old girls.(The jury is still out on boys of most ages.)

-Poor Joe not getting the job, though...I thought this was the end of the arc; if that really was the last aerospace engineer job in the area, what are they going to do?*begins ferreting out spoilers*(Hey, folks, I lasted three weeks) *is supremely annoyed by inability to find spoilers*

-Also, WHAT DO YOU MEAN, FOUR WEEKS UNTIL NEW EPISODES?!?!This is my coping mechanism for Mondays!I cannot be expected to face a week without it, much less AN ENTIRE MONTH!Shut up, I know I could placate myself with a few dozen older episodes, but it's not the same.I want Current Cute.

-Oh, hell, I was all excited thinking that by not starting to air until January, there would be a great glut of episodes to placate me during Strikegate...but apparently they only finished nine before the strike."That's SO not fair."

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SVU, 9.14, "Inconceivable"

*mutter grumble why does such relatively unimportant show end up with one of Strikegate Season's highest episode counts*

Aside from a general "OMIGOD MUNCH *squeedance*" feeling, and the subsequent feeling of moderate annoyance that I should not have to squee-dance over his mere presence, I'm feeling very "meh" about this one.It looked like it would be good, what with the stolen tank o' embryos and whatnot, but it didn't really deliver.Let me pull out five or six memorable points, in no particular order:

1) Fin deriding everyone's favorite LP actress (seriously, I love that woman.I should learn her name soon) for wanting to have an LP child and thus, apparently, saddle it with a disability.OH NO HE DIDN'T!Okay, you know, I get that there's a precedent for health problems relating to this type of stature, but it's not like she decided to have her baby's arms amputated at birth.My views on discrimination are probably sketchy at best, but it utterly baffles me that people would even comment on this, much less have a problem with it.By 'people,' I am thinking not only of this show and House before it, but of a loudmouth columnist in my local paper, who wrote an opinion piece expressing her horror at the parents on the show "Little People, Big World" for having the gall to procreate and inflict suffering on their innocent children.(I believe the paper exploded in flames even as I read it)

2) Elliot making a delightfully horrible mess out of attempting to provide consolation/support/encouragement over the idea of Olivia someday having children.I usually hate awkward scenes, but here I just dissolved into giggles every time."Elliot.Shut up."

3) I felt sorry for Chemo Woman until she hamfistedly asked Liv "what are you waiting for?" with regards to the latter having children.Well, I don't know, she might possibly have been looking for some semblance of a stable love interest first?(DISCLAIMER: I in no way accidentally added an "r" to any of the words in that sentence)That seems like it would be a big one.Or maybe she's already in the process of trying, and it's not going well, making the question very insensitive...not that it wasn't already.And if she was trying to less-than-subtly hint that Olivia should try IVF, you'd think she could connect "single woman working in law enforcement" to "prohibitively expensive."

4) I'm not sure how to feel about the mention that Olivia was looking into adoption a few months ago.On the one hand, character development?On the other, it feels kind of like contrivance and/or shoehorning.Frankly, I don't know why she bothered trying...she had to know her odds of acceptance were a zillion to one.

5) I'm also not sure how to feel about Munch dryly mentioning that for all they know, HE'S the prolific Donor 10-29.It's a tough call between snickering and just turning green.

6) Baby Stablerling was mentioned!And now he even has a proper name that won't lead to confusion, Eli, so...that's good."Baby Stablerling" was getting rather too long and tongue-twisting.

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Law & Order, 18x5, "Driven"

Ooh, racial tensions! Fun!Good old fashioned rich white vs. poor black.I have to say that was a really entertaining hour, although I found myself a bit disappointed in the verdict.I probably would have been disappointed no matter which way they came up with - and with a double trial, four different counts total, there were a lot of ways they could have taken - just because every time someone new started talking, they swayed me to their opinion.That's the sign of a good ep, I think, when it's presented fairly enough that you can see all sides.

But still - how did they find Mr. Welling guilty of murder, even in the 2nd degree, rather than manslaughter where the little girl was concerned?Her death was obviously a complete and total accident, and this verdict bothered me enough to start digging up definitions of the charge.The only thing I could come up with was having caused her death "while committing or attempting to commit a felony offense," which would be the murder of the Steele kid...but then they found him not guilty of that, having deemed it self-defense, and so doesn't that nullify the felony status?Ugh.Law confuses me.

Simultaneously convicting Mrs. Steele on the same charge seemed...not quite right.So she drove her kids over there, and ostensibly gave them bats.If anything, shouldn't we be...I don't know...charging the boys who were actually wielding said bats?They didn't have to listen to their mother's orders to stand up for themselves.Sure, mothers can be very influencing people, but the boys were in high school.It is my experience that high schoolers are all about not listening to their parents.It just seems like you have to trace a very long line of cause-and-effect steps to connect her to the accidental murder of the little girl, and possibly skip over some other glaring facts along the way.

I like the idea of them both getting the same sentence, provided it is a very short one, because my initial reaction is that their involvements were completely different...and yet when I weighed pros and cons, I sort of came up even.On the one hand, he actually FIRED A GUN.She sat calmly in her car.On the other hand, she's dropping racist remarks all over the place while he's brimming with tears and remorse, which shortens up the scales a whole bunch. Neither of them still seem especially guilty to me.

Meanwhile, in other news:

1) JACK MCCOY!It's a beautiful old church vs. new condo.You shouldn't have to think twice about any kind of motivation for saving it.

2) MarisolAlana Connie out on the street with the detectives, sporting a jaunty gray cap!Oh so cute.I really just love her to death. Although I feel her name could be prettier. Perhaps I shall revert to calling her Conseula.

$(&%($&#$, POST IS NOT TOO LARGE! Stupid LJ. Xanga doesn't have post limits! At least not ones I've reached...very well, hang on a tick and I'll be right back.